TCS issues 100 thousand passports
By Shalini Singh

Among the Indian tech majors, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) is still the market leader. A part of the Tata group, India’s largest industrial conglomerate, TCS has a workforce of over 174,000 IT consultants operating in 42 countries. The company generated consolidated revenues of $6.3 billion for fiscal year ending Mar 31, 2010.  Its last quarterly revenue was $2 Billion.

The Government of India’s Rs. 1000 crores Passport Seva Project (PSP) was won by TCS.  But, like some major projects, all did not go to plan. While the private sector is quick and nimble,  Government Departments are sometimes slow. This Public-Private Project was meant to go live in 2009, but missed 3 deadlines.  TCS paid a penalty of Rs. 2 Lakh for every week passed the deadline.  The Ministry of External Affairs is working with TCS on this project and not surprisingly its Minister, Mr. SM Krishna, who hails from Karnataka, has had much of the initial implementation done in his home State.

Despite the initial glitches, it seems TCS is now well in control of the project.  A Tipster tells Techgoss that TCS has sent an internal communication about how the ‘Passport Seva Program (PSP) has recently achieved a significant milestone by issuing over 100,000 passports and processing over 175,000 passport applications.’

As part of PSP, TCS will establish 77 Passport Seva Kendras (PSK) across India to provide citizens with reliable, convenient and transparent passport services. Four PSKs are fully operational in Karnataka (Bangalore (2), Mangalore, Hubli) and a 'soft launch' is currently being conducted in three PSKs in Punjab (Chandigarh, Ambala and Ludhiana). TCS is working with MEA for the national rollout of the remaining PSKs during the coming months.

The four PSKs in Karnataka have processed over 130,000 applications in a record time of five months. The daily number of passport applications processed in Karnataka has increased 100% since the launch of the program.

TCS even has a multilingual dedicated call centre and online facility to handle citizen’s queries

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